Inside the mind of a CEREAL SMASHER...

(this is another re-run from 2 years ago - enjoy)

"My name is Michelle and I am the mom of a cereal smasher."

(insert AA-style greeting here, "Hello Michelle!")

I don't pretend to understand the goings on in the cerebral cortex of someone under the age of four. I can't tell you WHY they do the things they do. But I would pay for someone to tell me HOW TO MAKE IT STOP!

There is something evil and twisted lurking inside the skull of he who is three.

This morning as I cleaned up milky smashed cereal pieces with a snow shovel, I pondered why anyone would feel the need to smash their breakfast into every crack and crevice of their favorite press-the-button book. I am certain it does not do much for the acoustics of Thomas the Tank's whistle...the little blue train gurgled and growled at me with each swipe of my dish rag.

I wonder about his mind...his tiny little ABC-reciting, I yuv wu Ma-saying mind. WHAT.IS.HE.THINKING?!
Now, I don't believe that all three year olds compose devious plots against the sanity of their moms. I have three kids and neither of my other children tested my need for Xanax like this one does.

What possesses a child to open the heating vent and shove 13,000 hot wheels inside?

Where in the pre-schooler handbook do you smile sweetly at strangers and then hand them your boogers?

In whose mind is it a good idea to rub cold oatmeal deep into the fur of the dog while Mommy is on the phone?

And...in what far corner of his mind do the synapses tell you to feed a pack and a half of Dentyne to the dog?

Then there is the oral fixation....everything goes in the mouth! EV.ERY.THING!

While most children go the picky-eater route at some point, this one....this one has an expanded palette that includes items you wouldn't find in the slop the farmer feeds Templeton and Wilbur. We are talking dog fur, bird poop, rocks, dirt, coins, pushpins, hairy lollipops, someone else's gum, sand, mulch, hard shards of cheese from the dustpan, the juice from a kidney bean can scavenged from the recycling bin, tissues and coffee grounds.
Yum! NOT!

Of course, the destruction and deviant digestion of a typical day is enough to having me peeling my eyelids off before lunchtime, my sanity (or lack there of) eventually comes down to how many temper tantrums I deal with in a day.

I remember seeing the tantrum of a friend's child and thinking, "Wow! She needs to get a handle on that behavior! That is ridiculous!"

But, recently, as I fought for a week to get my son's flailing legs into the leg-holes of the basket portion of the shopping cart while he beat the daylights out of my head with a monster truck, pulled my hair and shrieked as though I was sticking pins under his fingernails, I thought of my friend and her little angel who whined for .7 seconds when it was time to leave our playdate.
I have been banned from WalMart until further notice.

And when is it OK to bash Mommy in the back of the head with the MarioKart steering wheel?
 "EXCUSE ME for nodding off for a mere second during your 106th attempt to NOT be in 12th place!"

If anyone knows a good book about raising a CEREAL SMASHER... please forward the info.

Or....maybe I should write this book... then I could hire a maid to clean up the crumbs and pay for a therapist for me and my oatmeal-soft, minty-fresh dog.

Peace out, Mamas.

"Poison Control, how can I help you?"

I sat with my coffee yesterday morning and made a Monday - Friday calendar that lays out what chores I would need to complete each day so my house does not ALWAYS look like it threw up on itself. It is on my fridge as a reminder and I jumped out of the gates running this morning after getting the older kids to school and taking the baby to Nana's.

My house is not one of those houses you see on the news. No bags of garbage, no piles of stuff taller than me. I am just tired of wading through a high tide of legos, hot wheels, Thomas trains while searching through dirty plates and bowls of squishy cereal for the ringing phone that always seems to hide beneath the muck. I am nauseated by the amount of dust that lays in a blanket over my entertainment center and the many case-less DVDs, box-less movies and hidden food wrappers.

Really. It's not that bad but I tend to write more than I clean lately and with a VERY anal husband, it makes me feel bad that he works so hard to allow me to stay home and I can't even keep the house clean. 3 kids and almost 3,000 square feet is just ridiculously out of control sometimes!

So, today I planned to vacuum and dust and if time allowed I was going to start a project as I have declared Wednesday 'Project Day.' I vacuumed while the baby was at Nana's and when he came home I popped in his favorite movie -Stuart Little 2 - 5 minutes later, I called POISON CONTROL!

While I was getting rid of that petrified layer of dust with my spackling knife, my Stuart Little fan decided this product (although put on the counter, where I thought it was out of his reach - with NO lid on) looked a little like lemonade. When I turned around, his little mouth was hiding the opening of the spout. I didn't know if he had kicked his head back and gotten a mouthful or if this glimpse was the first touch...I SCREAMED, "NOOOOOO!"

I grabbed the bottle and looked at the label: KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN. FATAL IF SWALLOWED. ALWAYS REPLACE LID WHEN NOT IN USE.

Now, you must know, the spout on this bottle is sort of like a red wine vinegar spout, only one drop comes out at a time - you have to shake it to get a significant amount of fluid out.

Hello, Poison Control (1-800-222-1222) this is Mimi.

Mimi, the nurse I spoke to, asked if he coughed at all after I took it away from him. "Sob, sob, sob, snort - NO - sob, sob." She then told me that they have to put that on the bottle but the actual danger isn't in the swallowing but in actually breathing the liquid into the lungs. This will cause chemical pneumonia which is fatal b/c there is no way to clean the lungs of the oily substance. She said protocol is to call back in 1 hour, then 6 hours, then 24 hours. She reassured me that since he did not sputter and cough - there was most likely nothing to worry about.

He is fine. And he continued his rampage through my house while I tried to finish my dusting.

Mimi told me to give him some yogurt to keep the inside of his mouth from getting irritated from the oil...he thought he needed to make a 2-year old statement instead.

Oh, sorry, NOW he's done making his statement. The chicken nuggets is his piece de resistence.

Soon after this yogurt incident, a friend stopped by (Hi, Janet) and as we chatted just inside the front door, the baby ran past and into the office. A mere 3 seconds later, Janet says, "Ummm, do you want him to be doing that?" I glance in the office thinking, "What is he drinking, now?' only to find him standing on my swivel chair aiming the Febreze at my open laptop. All of this ridiculous chaos for this...

...a dusted, organized entertainment center. Why do I even try? UGH!

As if a subliminal reminder, I found my dust cloth under this book. Really. If you should read this book, you probably don't have the time to.

Hide the shoes...

Alrighty, I remembered where I was headed with today's blog, I was momentarily stunned by my European visitor and forgot all about the shoe post! But believe it or not as I was surfing (yes, instead of folding the mound of towels that are staring at me) other blogs I came across The Sorensen Family site and low and behold - another child with a shoe obsession!

http://sorensen6.blogspot.com/2007/10/obsess-much.html

My two year old has this same affliction as you can see from the photo above. These are the shoes from his Build-A-Bear monkey. He spent all day yesterday cramming as much of his little feet into these shoes and then walking around like a little cross-dresser. Alarmingly, it appears he would be quite secure in heels!

If anyone knows a good 12-step program for this shoe fetish, please let me know!